Traffic Diagram

The traffic diagram provides a graphical representation of your computer’s recent network activity. It lets you view and analyze total amounts of transmitted data, peak and average data rates, as well as related system events such as application launches or system sleep. It covers one hour of computer up-time and you can zoom in on a portion of the graph down to a one minute timeframe.

Traffic Diagram Overview

You can hover the diagram with the mouse to get an overlay with upload and download data rates for any point of time within the graph.
Zoom — This slider lets you select a zoom level from one hour down to one minute. Alternatively, you can zoom in by selecting an area in the diagram with the mouse (auto-zoom) or with a pinch to zoom gesture on a trackpad.
View Options — This pop-up menu lets you choose between linear and logarithmic data rate display, turn auto-zoom on/off and it provides a couple of fixed zoom presets. This menu can also be accessed via right-click into the diagram.

Traffic Diagram Selection

Data rates at cursor — One second average of the transmit and receive data rates. The values may fluctuate considerably. Make a selection to see averages over a longer time interval.
Selection — A time range can be selected by dragging the mouse over the range. The Connection List focuses on connections which actually had any traffic during the selected time and statistics for the time interval are computed.
Total Amounts — Shows the total amounts of received and sent data within the selected range. You can hold down the Option-key to see average data rates instead (averaged over the entire selection).

System Events

System events such as launch or termination of applications, fast user switching etc. are marked with yellow diamonds. You can hover them with the mouse to see a description of the event.

System Events

System Sleep

Those times where your computer was in sleep mode are marked with a thick, gray vertical line within the diagram. Those sleep times do not count up to the total of 60 minutes recorded in the traffic diagram.

You can hover the gray line with the mouse to get the duration of the system sleep displayed.

System Sleep Indication

Who has sent that byte? When you select a time range in the traffic diagram, the connection list and map view focus on connections that actually had any traffic during that time. If you see a traffic peak in the diagram, you can select it to see which process caused it. Note that limiting the time range in this way temporarily overrides any time limit (“Show only Last…”) currently set in the filter.

Moving average — The selected time range can be moved by holding down the Command key and dragging it with the mouse. Statistics in the Total Amounts display are updated in real-time. Hence, when you select a one minute time range and drag it over a download with the Command and Option keys held down, you can inspect the one minute average download rates over time.